Our experiments with acid rain

You know that rain is an important part of the water cycle. Rain is also very important for life; all living beings need water to live, even people, and rain brings us the water we need. But rain can be dangerous in some parts of the world because of pollution of the air. This rain is what we know as acid rain.

Acid gases are produced when fossil fuels are burned. But nature can also produce this kind of gases in volcanoes. When they mix when the water in clouds it can cause rain to become acid. Lemon juice, vinegar are acids; and sometimes rain is as acid as lemon juice.

Acids can be harmful. If there is too much acid in soil, seeds will not germinate and plants will not grow. Leaves affected by acid rain cannot make photosynthesis.

So, we are going to study the effect of acid rain in plants in our laboratory. We are going to prepare two experiments. In the first one we are going to study the effect of acid rain on the germination of lentil seeds. We are going to prepare some Petri dishes with 16 seeds. We are going to add only water to five of them; we will add different solutions of acetic acid in water to the rest. We will study the germination of seeds in every plate for a time.

In the second one we are going to grow lentil plants until they have leaves. Half of the plants will be watered with fresh water; the rest will be irrigated with a solution of acetic acid. We will study differences between these two treatments. In our blog we will post pictures with our results. Please, contribute to our research with comments.
(Spanish version)

And our first results

Two days after the beginning of our experiment, we have our first results. Two seeds have germinated in control plates. No seed have germinated in plates with acid solutions. Here you have a picture of these plates.